Pick Your Favorite, Please...

After I photographed the tree at the Vanderbilt Museum, I walked over to these antique columns that are in a semicircle at the entrance of the Vanderbilt Estate.  The land drops away from here for several hundred feet, down to the water and it is a spectacular view off to the left of this photo. These six columns are a thousand years old and come from Carthage, now the modern Tunisa.  They stand 14 feet high and weigh 4000 pounds each and were installed when the estate was built in 1912.

So I am torn about which photograph I like best.  Color is such a part of how I see the world and in creating photographs, but I love black & white photographs a lot!  So I converted this photo to black & white and even now I can't decide which photograph is my favorite.  Please help me out here, and vote for your favorite photograph of the two!  Save me!  Thank you!

 

Tree and Sky at Dusk

I wasn't sure that I had a good photograph for the blog tonight.  I think I still have a photo or two from our trip to Rochester, but I was not sure. When I got to my astronomy meeting tonight just a bit early I decided to wander around the parking lot before walking down to the planetarium.  I spotted this tree from across the parking lot, and walked over to it and then started walking around it while shooting photographs.  This was the last photo I shot because the tree was the most silhouetted from this point. I love the shape of this tree and it's bare branches!   And below it in the background, that building is the Marine Museum and the Hall of Fishes.  Someday I should visit that!

A Waste of Good Land

                              

Look at this farmland.  Looks like the farmer grew corn here this past year.  What a waste of good land!  This land could be used for something really useful, instead of just growing some crops.  Who needs more corn, anyway?  You could put something beautiful here that would be much more interesting to look at!

Like THIS for instance!  Homes for people to live in!  Much more beautiful that fields of corn, right?  Believe it or not, this development is right across the road from the farm in the first photograph.  All I did was turn around to take the first photograph, after I took this one.  Seriously.

There, isn't THIS more attractive than a field of corn?  It is a huge development, with different kinds of housing.  I wouldn't dare wander on to the property, so I photographed everything from the road.

These structures on this part of the property are different from those in the previous photograph and they are closer to the road.  It will be interesting to see what the whole thing looks like when it is finished.  I had a sense that the use of the land was going to change, when almost exactly one year ago, I photographed a farmhouse and two trees next to it, that was located on the edge of this land.     So click on this link and read my blog post from back one year ago.  What's to Become of This?  By now, of course you know my comment about "a waste of the land" was facetious!  You know from my photographs that I love photographing fields and farmhouses and the beauty of the land.  Not so much giant new condominium developments.

Eastman House, a New View

This was George Eastman's home, and is now the George Eastman Museum, or at least the house part of it.  There are other structures attached to it at the back, including the Dryden Theater and then galleries behind that.  I don't think I have photographed it from this angle before.  If you want to see what it looks like from the front, click here:  Eastman House Front.  I am looking across one of the gardens and the Loggia, from the other day, is right behind me.  I need to photograph this view again when the garden is in full bloom!  The chimneys on the right side of this photo are so distinctive to this mansion.

 

A Nice Message

I am always looking for photographs.  Always.  I was returning to Vince and Jo Anne's after going to the Eastman House, and as I turned the corner I saw these two hand painted signs leaning up against this rock.  I thought that given the current climate where some people are no longer civil to one another, that these two signs were a welcome message. They are a nice reminder that there is always hope.  And I am also reminded, as I think about this, that almost all of the people we meet each day are kind to one another.  So we only hear about the small minority who behave badly.  So I celebrate all the rest of us who are kind, and help one another and who are a joy to be around.

 

The West Garden Loggia

Well, I had to look up the name of this structure!  And I learned a new word: "Loggia."  This is a photograph of the loggia in the west garden of the George Eastman Museum.  What caught my eye are the vines growing up on the open parts of the loggia. During the growing season, these vines all have leaves on them, so what grabbed my attention is the bare shapes of the vines which are striking with parts of the vines seeming to reach out. That's what I saw that made me realize there was a photograph here.  About the loggia: "A loggia (from the Italian word for ‘lodge’) is an outdoor corridor or gallery with a fully covered roof and an outer wall that is open to the elements. Traditionally, loggias either ran along the facade of a building or could exist as a stand-alone feature. The open outer side of the loggia is usually supported by several columns or decorative arches.  I hope you found this as interesting as I did.

 

Focus, Click, TOTALITY

I saw these T-Shirts for sale at George Eastman Museum and my first reaction was "I NEED one of these!"  Then I looked at the price, $29.95 and decided that in fact, I did not need another T-Shirt.  What's funny is that I rarely wear T-Shirts, but I do like to buy them.  And this would be particularly interesting because Rochester never saw totality.  So much for "Focus, Click, TOTALITY."  That never happened, so maybe that makes a shirt like this even more valuable.  And the design on the front of the shirt is really beautifully done.  It is very cool.  So cool, that maybe I should have bought one!   :-)